One of the most widely attested genres is the proverb: a pithy saying, often in poetic form, that cleverly expresses a facet of experience. Proverbs are scattered throughout the Bible and also clustered in one book, the book of Proverbs. These proverbs most likely began as folk wisdom that scribes collected, expanded, and in some cases at least cast into poetic form. These scribes were often under royal patronage, as editorial notes in the book of Proverbs indicate; for example, “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, collected” (Prov. 25:1). That heading, like a half dozen others found in the book, also illustrates the nature of the book of Proverbs as an anthology of several originally independent collections.
The international character of wisdom literature is illustrated by the connection between “the words of the wise” in Proverbs 22:17—24:22 and “The Instruction of Amenemope,” a late second-millennium BCE Egyptian text. Both are divided into thirty units; among their many parallels are:
Do not make friends with one given to anger,
and do not visit a man who is hotheaded. (Prov. 22:24)
Do not befriend the heated man,
nor approach him for conversation. (Amenemope XI.13–14)
Do not move the ancient boundary
that your fathers made. (Prov. 22:29)
Do not move the markers on the borders of fields
nor shift the position of the measuring cords. (Amenemope
VII.12–13)
Do you see a man who is skillful in his work?
He will be established in the presence of kings. (Prov. 22:29)
The scribe who is skilled in his office,
he is found worthy to be a courtier. (Amenemope
XXVII.16–17)1
Reflecting this setting in royal courts, some proverbs are a kind of guide to etiquette and advancement, dealing with such issues as table manners in the presence of the king and proper and improper speech. Others treat larger ethical questions—honesty in business, treatment of the needy, respect for parents.
Given the close connection between religious observance and ordinary life in ancient Israel, not surprisingly many of the proverbs also have religious content, stressing that the ultimate path to success is what they call “fear of the Lord,” that is, obeying divinely given commands. For the prophets, this has primarily a communal dimension: Yahweh would reward the nation for its obedience and punish it for its rebellion. In Proverbs this same notion of divine justice, or, as it is often called, theodicy, is applied to the individual:
Honor Yahweh with your wealth
and with the first fruits of all your produce;
then your barns will be filled with plenty,
and your vats will be bursting with new wine. (Prov. 3:9–10)
The reward for humility and fear of Yahweh
is riches and honor and long life. (22:4)
Underlying such sentiments is a compelling vision of a powerful deity who is intimately involved in human affairs. That view eventually led to the development of monotheism, the belief that the god of Israel was the only God, who controlled history on all levels, from international relations to ordinary life.
The problem of divine justice
In monotheism, there is only one God, by definition all-good, all-powerful, all-just, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. But experience shows that this is not always the case—innocent people suffer, wicked people prosper. This profound issue is addressed at length in two biblical books. One is the book of Ecclesiastes, written in a philosophical style in the fourth century BCE. Like Socrates or Diogenes, its anonymous author describes his search for the meaning of life. He observes that contrary to conventional wisdom, the innocent sometimes perish despite their innocence, and the wicked sometimes flourish—God does not, or at least does not seem to, always reward goodness and punish wickedness. What is one to do in the face of this dilemma? The conclusion of Ecclesiastes is almost existential: eat, drink and be merry, enjoy life as long as you have it, because we all die, and that is the end.
Afterlife in the Old Testament
Because the Old Testament’s constituent parts were written over the course of many centuries, it is risky to generalize about the biblical view of almost anything, since on many issues there was development in thinking and also disagreement. This is especially true when we try to determine what the ancient Israelites believed about life after death.
The practice of consulting the dead, necromancy, confirms that there was some notion of survival beyond the grave. Although prohibited, it was widely practiced, and in at least one case was successful, when at King Saul’s request a woman who was a medium summoned the dead prophet Samuel from the underworld. But unlike the ancient Egyptians, who were obsessed with life after death, as their elaborate tombs demonstrate, the ancient Israelites give us scant information about it. All the dead lived in a place called Sheol, a dark and dank place, more like the Greek Hades than the blessed west of the Egyptians. There was no contact with God in Sheol, and ordinary life apparently had ended. Ecclesiastes describes it this way: “The dead know nothing … There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol” (Eccles. 9:5, 10). Only relatively late in the biblical period, partly in an effort to resolve the problem of inconsistent divine justice in this life, did Jews begin to develop a more elaborate set of beliefs about the afterlife as a place of reward for the just and punishment for the wicked. This would eventually become the familiar heaven and hell, which Christians and Muslims adopted.
The book of Job
A fuller examination of the problem of theodicy than that of Ecclesiastes is the book of Job. It is one of the most difficult books of the Bible, not only because of its frequently obscure language and somewhat flawed structure, but mostly because of the questions it asks and leaves unanswered.
The framework of the book is prose, and it reads like a reworked ancient folktale. In the prologue, chapters 1 and 2, we are introduced to Job as a perfect man, who “feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1). His piety had been rewarded by great wealth and a large family—seven sons and three daughters. One day, at a meeting of the divine council, Yahweh engaged in a debate with a mysterious figure called the satan over whether Job’s piety was authentic—was he a God-fearer because it was to his advantage? What if he were stripped of his wealth? Job, the quintessentially innocent, has become the stakes in a cosmic wager.
With divine approval, the satan apparently causes a series of disasters, in which Job’s many herds of animals were captured or killed, and finally, most horribly, his ten children were killed as well. Job’s response, later to be characterized as “the patience of Job” (James 5:11), shows that his piety is authentic: “Yahweh has given; Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh” (Job 1:21). At the next meeting of the council, Yahweh confronts the satan again: Job “still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him without cause” (Job 2:3). The satan retorts that the true test will be Job’s own person, and, again with divine approval, he afflicts Job with a skin disease. Job sits among the ashes, scratching himself with a broken piece of pottery, but does not “sin with his lips” (2:10).
The satan is apparently one of the “sons of God,” a member of the divine council. His title means “accuser”—perhaps even, in the forensic language that permeates the book, something like a prosecutor. This figure will later become Satan, the devil of Jewish and Christian tradition, but he is not that yet. He is only a kind of foil, who disappears from the book after chapter 2—both Job’s friends and Job himself attribute his suffering directly to God.
The narrative prologue sets the stage for an extended discussion of the problem of divine justice in chapters 3—41, cast as a series of dialogues between Job and three of his friends, and finally between Job and Yahweh himself. There are many critical problems with the dialogues, and they seem to be in some disarray, especially in chapters 24–28. The book has also undergone considerable revision, as
the unexpected appearance of a fourth friend in chapters 32–37 shows. But the core of the dialogues is a sustained consideration of Job’s case. His three friends proclaim the traditional view: God is just, and thus Job is suffering because he must have done something wrong; his children died because they too must have sinned.
Job angrily rejects these platitudes, insisting on his innocence—a claim that we the readers know to be true—and that he had lived up to the highest ideals of Israelites:
I delivered the poor who cried,
and the orphan who had no helper.
The blessing of the wretched came upon me,
and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy…
I was eyes to the blind,
and feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy,
and I championed the cause of those I knew not. (Job 29:13–16)
Finally, using another legal metaphor, Job issues God a subpoena: “Here is my signature—let the Almighty answer me!” (31:35).
Then Yahweh does answer Job, appearing to him from the tempest. The divine answer is a series of rhetorical questions to Job, mocking his claim to wisdom:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4–7)
For three chapters (Job 38–41), the divine architect rants on. He describes his power—how he set limits for the proud waves of the sea and made the primeval monster Leviathan his pet—and catalogues the wonders of the natural order. These divine speeches contain some of the most magnificent poetry in the Bible, yet they completely ignore Job’s complaint.
Job replies, in words whose Hebrew is difficult and whose meaning is debated; here is a relatively free translation, in which the italicized parts are quotations from God’s earlier speeches:
I know that you can do all things
and nothing you wish is impossible.
Who is this whose ignorant words
cover my design with darkness?
I have spoken of the unspeakable,
and tried to grasp the infinite.
Listen, and I will speak;
I will question you; please, instruct me.
I had heard of you with my ears;
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet,
comforted that I am dust. (Job 42:1–6)2
What do these final words of Job mean? That having seen God, his consciousness had been raised, and he knows that there are limits to human wisdom? If so, Job is apparently satisfied. But are we? Some modern readers have interpreted Job’s words to mean that Job realizes that his situation is hopeless and is saying anything, anything, to get this blustering tyrant to shut up; an alternative, even freer translation of the last verse is “I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay.”3
In the prose epilogue (Job 42:7–17) we are returned to the ancient folktale. Yahweh rebukes Job’s friends, for they have not spoken the truth as Job did. Then Yahweh restores Job’s fortunes, doubling the property that had been lost. Is this an implicit admission of divine culpability? In biblical law such punitive damages are prescribed in cases of theft (Exod. 22:4–9). Finally, Job has more children, again seven sons and three daughters, to replace those who had been killed, and like the patriarchs of old, he dies at a ripe old age. It is, one might think, a happy ending. But again, we may pose a question—what of the dead children, who lost their lives to prove Yahweh’s point?
Illustrating the universality of wisdom literature, it is significant that Job himself is not an Israelite—he lives in Uz, somewhere in Edom outside the Promised Land. Although the anonymous author of the book is an Israelite—the book itself is permeated by quotations from and allusions to other biblical texts—in the dialogues Job and his friends do not call God “Yahweh”—only the narrator does. Moreover, the book is remarkable for its lack of explicit reference to the main events and personalities of the Bible: there is no mention of Abraham, Moses, or David, nor of Sinai or Jerusalem. The deity who reveals himself to Job is not the lord of history but a god of nature. These silences suggest one possible interpretation of this challenging book: history, whether of an individual or of a people, is opaque: it does not reveal the actions of a just God who rewards goodness and punishes wickedness.
Other interpretations are also possible, and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Perhaps because of his experience of the transcendent creator, Job has become like the mystics of many religions, surrendering himself in faith to a reality greater than himself in whose presence his own concerns fade into insignificance. Or the ambiguity of Job’s final speech and the book’s many unanswered questions may be deliberate: perhaps the questions are more important than any formulaic answer.
In its attack on the dominant biblical view of theodicy, the book of Job illustrates yet again that the Bible speaks not with one voice but with many, and that the presence of those differing perspectives invites, even compels, readers to think for themselves.
Chapter 11
“Let us now praise famous men”—and women
The quotation in the chapter title is the opening phrase of a lengthy poetic summary of major and minor characters of biblical literature, written in the early second century BCE by the Jewish author known as Ben Sira, or Sirach, and preserved in the book that bears his name (also known as Ecclesiasticus), one of the Apocrypha in the Christian canon. For six chapters (beginning in 44:1), Ben Sira gives readers an overview of those “whose name lives on and on,” including Enoch and Noah in the opening chapters of Genesis, Israel’s ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, notable leaders and prophets such as Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Josiah, Ezekiel, and other remarkable characters found in the pages of the Bible. Three of these characters illustrate the ongoing importance of the Bible, as well as issues concerning its interpretation.
Abraham
Abraham, says Ben Sira, was “the great father of a multitude of nations” (Sir. 44:19, quoting Gen. 17:4), with whom God made a covenant to multiply his descendants and to give them an inheritance—the Promised Land. Abraham is the principal character in Genesis 12–25, along with his wives Sarah and Hagar, his sons Ishmael and Isaac, and his nephew Lot. His story begins abruptly, as with no apparent motivation Yahweh summons him to leave his homeland and to move to a new land, the land of Canaan. There God repeatedly appears to him reaffirming his promise.
There is a mythical dimension to the narratives about Abraham. He often speaks directly with Yahweh, and on one occasion Yahweh even visits him for a meal. But was there ever an Abraham? Or is he just a legendary ancestor, like Romulus, the supposed founder of Rome? We cannot say. Not surprisingly, there are no contemporaneous nonbiblical sources corroborating either the individuals or the events described in Genesis. Because Genesis depicts Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as semi-nomadic pastoralists wandering with their flocks on the fringes of the larger urban centers of their days, they were at most extras on the larger stage of their times. They would not have invited enough attention to require mention in official records, of which we have only a few from the land of Canaan during most of the second millennium BCE. Moreover, the biblical narrative is complex and multilayered, originating many centuries after any time that Abraham could plausibly have lived. A few clues hint that beneath the sources used by the biblical writers there is some historical memory, but they are subtle clues at best.
We should probably be content to take Abraham as an idealized ancestor: Abraham “believed in Yahweh, and Yahweh considered him righteous” (Gen. 15:6). He always complied with divine commands—emigration, circumcision, even the sacrifice of his son Isaac. As the n
ineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard aptly called him, Abraham was a “knight of faith.” On occasion he could challenge Yahweh to act justly, not to let the innocent in Sodom perish while he punished the guilty—the very issue raised in the book of Job. In this too he is something of a model, anticipating Moses, Job, Jeremiah, and other biblical characters who argued with God.
The narrative about Abraham also serves as a kind of overture to the books of the Bible that follow. He is the ancestor of a nation covenanted with God, one given, or at least promised, a land of its own. The relationship of that nation with its Promised Land—the “holy land” (Zech. 2:12) is a central biblical theme, and one that reverberates throughout subsequent Jewish history, whether Abraham’s descendants are in the land or exiled from it.
The Old Testament_A Very Short Introduction Page 11
